


Five Times Ronan Wants to Nintendo Switch™ His Own Brain Off (And One Time Adam Cons Him Into Playing Animal Crossing)

by JayJEx



Series: Quarantine Collection [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: 5+1 Things, Crack, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Nintendo Switch, quarantine fic, vaguely OOC tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28313757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayJEx/pseuds/JayJEx
Summary: Coronavirus be damned, Ronan’s going to have to book a flight to Japan and fistfight someone, because Adam’s literally never shown any interests in video games before now, and a Nintendo Switch sounds like a new and stupidly specific position on the dom/sub spectrum -- but neither of those facts stopped one fromstealing his fucking boyfriend.-or-Adam gets a Nintendo Switch. Ronan doesn’t get jealous.Of coursehe doesn’t.(Shut the fuck up.)
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: Quarantine Collection [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2073663
Comments: 8
Kudos: 118





	Five Times Ronan Wants to Nintendo Switch™ His Own Brain Off (And One Time Adam Cons Him Into Playing Animal Crossing)

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as a sequel to [ this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26522977), but you don't have to read that one first.

It seemed innocuous enough at first.

It’d started as an offhand comment towards the latter end of Adam’s first semester of junior year, of Adam saving up to buy a new game...thingy. Ronan doesn’t know enough about anything that requires batteries to have anything meaningful to say in response, so he just hums in a mild attempt at passing interest and the conversation moves on from there.

He knows better, at this point in their relationship, than to offer to just buy one for Adam, even though he’d be completely willing to. They’d had some hard conversations about it, about Adam’s need for independence, his unwillingness to rely on someone else for his own wellbeing. Ronan _wants_ on the one end, but Adam _needs_ on the other, so Ronan lets it go where he can.

Between the pandemic and quarantine and D&D and Ronan’s mild brain crisis about gender, any thoughts about any potential incoming video game consoles get put on the backburner. His proverbial plate is full, so to speak. It doesn’t sound like that terrible of an idea, anyway - they both have an overabundance of time on their hands. If Adam wants to pass some of it with a video game thingamajiggy, Ronan’s the last person to judge - his hobbies these days consist basically of staring at the ceiling blankly long enough to mentally become one with the aether and trying to speak loudly enough in video calls with Gansey to antagonize Henry.

He certainly hadn’t expected it to turn into his _worst fucking nightmare._

The only good thing - literally, like, the _only_ good thing to come out of this whole Coronavirus shit was that Ronan was supposed to get unfettered, unfiltered, 24/7 access to Adam. That was the fucking deal. Everything else in his life might be fucking falling apart, the election might be a mess, his country might be on the verge of a neo-fascist coup, but he was supposed to be able to _cuddle his fucking boyfriend._

God had other plans, apparently. Coronavirus be damned, Ronan’s going to have to book a flight to Japan and fistfight someone, because Adam’s literally never shown any interests in video games before now, and a Nintendo Switch sounds like a new and stupidly specific position on the dom/sub spectrum -

\- but neither of those facts stopped one from _stealing his fucking boyfriend_.

**I. Mario Kart Me Off The Edge Of A Fucking Cliff™**

Ronan frowns up at the clock for the umpteenth time that hour.

Adam’s new game thingy came in the mail, and he’s been locked up in their room for the past four hours straight, which - honestly fair, Ronan can’t be mad about that, he also definitely would lock himself in isolation for an extended period of time if he got something new and shiny to play with, he does it with half the shit he pulls out of his dreams. If anything, he’s glad there’s stuff for Adam to be genuinely excited about. He could never begrudge Adam that.

It does mean he’s a little lonelier than usual, though.

It doesn’t help that he’s missing his daily call with Gansey for some reason - Gansey normally calls around 3:00, like clockwork. Except it’s 3:47 already, and _Gansey still hasn’t called him_ , which is _fine,_ for the record. It’s not like Ronan _likes_ those phone calls anyway - it’s a miracle he bothers to fucking pick up most of the time. It’s not like he wants to talk to his friends while he’s stuck in social isolation. Or his boyfriend, for that matter. Play your shitty game thing, miss your fucking phone call. It’s fine.

He sighs and gives up on staring at his phone, figuring he might as well go check on Adam - Ronan doesn’t want to distract or bother him, but he’s getting pretty desperate to hear someone’s voice that isn’t his own, so he figures he might try to talk to Adam before he does something _truly_ crazy, like _calling Gansey first_.

So imagine his surprise when he hears what is clearly Gansey’s frenzied shouting coming from the other side of the door to their room.

He slams the door open without knocking, because _what the fuck._

“Oh, Ronan, hey,” says Adam, looking completely unalarmed, attention still set on the TV thing in front of him. “I was wondering when you’d swing by."

“Ronan!” comes Gansey’s voice again - Ronan searches around for the source. He finds it quickly, in the form of an open laptop with a running Discord call. Ronan closes his jaw with a snap - so _that’s_ why he missed their usual call.

Gansey’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts. “Distract Adam so I can win!” he demands.

“Win?” says Ronan, confused. He quickly shifts his gaze to the TV screen, where a blonde lady in a jumpsuit is all but flying around on a weird pink motorcycle, a banana peel somehow stuck to its back wheel. Ronan blinks at it, as if staring at it longer will somehow let him derive any sort of meaningful understanding. No dice. Ronan has no fucking clue what’s going on.

“We’re playing Mario Kart together,” Adam explains. “Online multiplayer.”

“Mario Kart?” Ronan parrots intelligently - he’s heard the name before, though he can’t remember from where exactly - probably from Matthew, if he has to guess.

“Yes,” says Adam, controller in hand, watching the game in front of him with rapt attention. “And I’m _winning.”_

“You’ll eat those words once I get a blue shell,” comes the voice of Henry Cheng, also through the laptop.

“Right, because I’m _very scared_ you’ll catch me all the way from 9th place,” says Adam, rolling his eyes.

“How dare you slight me like this!” Henry all but shouts. “Blue! I’ll blueshell him, you destroy him!”

Blue’s voice comes out strained sounding. “Already on it -”

“Too late,” says Adam, serenely gliding past the finish line, ending the race. The rest of the call erupts into a cacophony of incoherent screeching, which does nothing to clarify literally anything for Ronan.

Ronan can already feel the migraine coming on.

“This is pretty fun,” says Adam offhandedly to him, deftly ignoring their friend’s screams and shouts of anger. “Do you want to play with us?”

Ronan takes a look at him, a look at the TV, where the blonde lady who was on the bike is now waving at him from a podium next to a weird turtle dragon thing and a very rotund ghost, and a look at Adam’s computer, from which emanate the incredibly angry and chaotic voices of their friends.

He looks back at Adam and says, “I’ll pass, I think.”

“Suit yourself,” says Adam with a shrug. He reaches over and pops the tab off a Mountain Dew and chugs the whole thing in one go, before inclining his head towards the computer and shouting, “You guys want a rematch?”

“Fuck yes,” says Blue. “This time I’m going to _destroy you.”_

“Ooh, I’ll bet,” says Adam, sounding downright _cocky_ in a way that Ronan hadn’t realized Adam could be, which - welp. He adds it to the list of emotions he can currently identify himself as feeling - confusion, exasperation, annoyance, _horny on main for Adam_.

He takes the liberty of excusing himself from the room, his brain stuck in an incoherent fog.

_Welp,_ he thinks to himself, flopping down on the living room couch in prime ceiling-viewing position. _Back to fucking dissociating it is._

**II. The Legend of Ronan’s Patience Running The Fuck Out Fast, I Swear To Fucking God™**

Ronan’s going to go _fucking insane_.

This whole video game thing has quickly taken over Adam’s life - and his by extension, because Adam is basically his life right now. He’d thought it’d pass after a day or too, that Adam would lose interest and eventually be forced to leave the refuge of their cozy little room in search of, like, food, or water, or _Ronan_. No such luck - the full force of the single minded drive and determination that got Adam through high school and into Harvard is now being brought to bear against _The Legend of Zelda,_ apparently, and Ronan stands _no fucking chance_. It’s all he can do to keep Adam fed and hydrated at this point, coaxing him away from his game for minutes at a time with the promise of a delicious home cooked meal and a nice, cool glass of ice-cold water.

And to top it all off, there’s that _fucking sound_.

Most of the time, Zelda is a fairly inoffensive game, soundwise at least - he remembers from Matthew’s younger years some of the noises that video games could make, gunfire and explosions and death and zombies and all that. Zelda normally steers clear of that mess: the gameplay, insofar as Ronan can tell, seems to consist entirely of some blond twink running around a picturesque and idylic countryside, hitting things with sticks and climbing things and generally fucking about, which makes a little bit less noise than whatever the fuck Matthew used to play.

With one notable exception - some _fucking genius_ at Nintendo thought it’d be a great idea to play a cute, kitschy little jingle every single fucking time Adam _opens his fucking map,_ and if Ronan has to hear it one more fucking time, he’s going to fucking _lose it._

He barges into their room without any warning, because he’s polite like that. “Can you turn the fucking volume down?”

“Can’t, sorry,” says Adam, not even glancing up at him - he swears it’s been _days_ since he’s last been able to look directly into Adam’s eyes. “I want to hear the game, and it’s hard with my shitty ear.”

Ronan groans. “Come on,” he all but whines, “just a little? It’s driving me fucking insane.”

_That_ of all things is what gets Adam to finally look at him. He gives Ronan a look. “What do you mean?” he says. “The sound design in this game is literally immaculate.”

Ronan flops down next to him - this is the closest thing they’ve had to a conversation in a while, and he intends to _milk it for everything it’s worth_. “Not the sound of you opening the map,” he says. “It’s fucking driving me crazy.”

Adam hums. “It’s a good choice in context - opening the map diegetically is your character pulling the Sheikah Slate out, and the little sound helps sell that fantasy.” He frowns, considerate. “I guess I could see how it could get annoying, though.”

“It doesn’t annoy you?” says Ronan, giving Adam a confused look - he must have heard the damn sound, like, ten-zillion times by now.

Adam shakes his head. “Not really,” he says. “I kind of like it.”

Ronan sighs, turning his attention to the screen in front of him. The game itself is pretty, even he has to admit - Adam’s in a valley lake looking area with beautiful, sculpted bridges that seem to glow in the dim, moonlit sky. As Ronan watches, Adam’s character walks up to a big red fish man and starts talking to him.

“Say,” says Adam, sounding vaguely mischievous. “Don’t you think [ that fish guy's](https://twitter.com/KimoForce/status/840635918646202368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) kind of hot?”

Ronan all but chokes on his drink. “What?!” he says, once he manages to clear the Coke from his windpipe.

“The fish dude,” says Adam, gesturing back at the screen. “He’s hot.”

“What?!” Ronan protests. “He’s a fucking fish?!”

“Oh, I sure hope he’s a fucking fish - oh my god, look at his _teeth,”_ says Adam, leaning forward with interest. 

“What - but -” Ronan sputters - this is the first actual conversation they’ve had in _days,_ and it’s about Ronan being _cucked by a fucking fish._ “You can’t _fuck a fish!”_ he protests.

“Why not?” says Adam. “I’ve watched _The Shape of Water,_ I’ll make it work.”

Ronan mentally adds Guillermo del Toro to his list of people to fistfight, right underneath the CEO of Nintendo but slightly above Declan.

“Listen,” he says through his gritted teeth. “If you want to fuck someone, I’m _right here -”_

Adam laughs, cutting him off. “Ronan, I’m _joking,”_ he says, eyes alight with mirth. “He’s a video game character, he’s not real.”

Ronan folds his arms petulantly. “How come you never say _I’m_ hot.”

Adam kicks him. “Don’t fish for compliments,” he says. He laughs again. “Ha - _fish_ for compliments.”

“I fucking hate it here,” says Ronan, drawing a roll of the eyes from Adam. He presses in closer, allowing Ronan to wrap an arm around him as he plays, though he doesn’t take his eyes off the screen - not _quite_ what Ronan wanted, but he’ll take what he can get.

“Damn,” says Adam, standing next to the fish dude and panning the camera upwards. “He’s _tall.”_

Ronan pinches the bridge of his nose and refrains from saying anything.

**III. Someone’s Going To Super Smash This Fucking Console At The Rate This Is Going, And It Might Not Even Be Fucking Ronan™**

He has to admit to being mildly concerned when he passes by their room to the sound of _frustrated cursing_ for the fourth time that day.  
  
Ever since the _“Adam’s Scaly Fish Fuckery”_ incident, Ronan’s decided that it’s probably best that he gives Adam a wide berth while he plays with his thingy. He goes about his day, alone and tragically unkissed by his boyfriend, milking his cows and feeding Chainsaw and Opal and occasionally fielding a call from Gansey and spending a worrying large amount of time blankly staring at a wall, content to leave Adam at peace with his games.

Though if the language Adam is currently using is anything to go by, Adam can hardly be described as “at peace.”

Not that Ronan has anything against anger - on the contrary, he knows firsthand how satisfying and cathartic it can be to lose your fucking shit every once in a while. But this might be a bit too far, even for Ronan - around the fourth time he hears Adam refer to someone as “a complete and utter useless sack of shit who should uninstall the game and permanently remove themself from the collective human gene pool for the good of society,” he decides it might be time to intervene.

Gingerly, he opens the door - normally he’s not one for caution, but his instincts are screaming that this may be a bit of a delicate situation, which is bad for Ronan, who is normally about as delicate as a bus careening wildly out of control into the side of a building. But, for Adam’s sake, he is willing to try.

“Hey,” he tries - a nice, neutral greeting with few connotations.

“Not now, Ronan,” says Adam, eyes focused on the screen in front of him as he mashes away at the controls. “I’m busy.”

Ronan eyes the TV, where a giant turtle man is currently fighting a green haired women with a stick. “Right,” he says. “Sorry to bother you. I was just - you know. Checking in on you.”

“I’m fine,” says Adam, still not looking up. He grimaces, mashing the buttons on the controller more. “Trying to focus -” he cuts himself off with a curse. _“Fuck_ \- I hate Palutena.”

Ronan grimaces. He’s starting to regret being abrasive all the time - he has literally zero clue how to approach a situation delicately, but he gets the distinct feeling if he does what he normally does and just walks in and steals the Switch from Adam and yells a bunch of cuss words, he’d end up _entirely_ sans boyfriend, which is not what he wants.

“Listen,” he says awkwardly, “hate to interrupt you while you’re...busy, but -”

“God-fucking-damnit,” Adam cuts him off with a curse, all but throwing the controller down with an angry huff. “Palutena nair should be classified as a hate crime.”

Ronan pauses with a shake of his head, trying to meaningfully parse that statement. He fails miserably.

“I swear to fucking god, what are these rulesets?!” Adam demands. “What filthy pleb tier casual comes on here with items and FS Meter enabled?!”

Yeah - Ronan’s just going to give up on understanding whatever’s coming out of Adam’s mouth. “Maybe,” he tries tentatively, “you should take a little break -”

_“No,”_ says Adam, emphatically shooting him down. “I don’t care how many fucking Palutena nairs I have to eat, I’m getting Bowser into Elite Smash.”

“Are...you sure?” says Ronan awkwardly, for a complete lack of anything else to say. In response, Adam gives him a look like he wants to _Super Smash_ Ronan’s face - and not in the fun way that Ronan would lowkey be down for.

“Yes,” says Adam, “I’m _sure.”_ He turns back to the TV and hits the play again button.

“Are you _really_ sure,” says Ronan, well aware of how many limits he’s currently pushing. “You seem a little...worked up.”

Adam grits his teeth. “I can assure you,” he says tightly, “that I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“...no?”

_“No.”_

“...ok?” says Ronan, unsure of what to do. “Can I...get you something? You want a snack? Maybe something to drink?”

Adam sighs. “Ronan, I’m _fine,”_ he insists. “I just need to focus - except I _can’t_ because of this _fucking lag, what the actual fuck!_ I swear to fucking god - _why are we playing Super Smash Bros: Dial Up Internet Edition?!_ Can these degenerate, smooth-brained, crayon eating fucking Wi-Fi players do something useful for once in their lives and send me their addresses so I can buy them an ethernet cable and _shove it up their fucking -”_

Ronan grimaces, slipping out of the room - it might be best to just wait this one out.

**IV: Super Mario Odd-That-I-Can’t-See My Own Fucking Boyfriend Despite The Fact That He’s Fucking Living In My House With Me™**

Even by Ronan’s high standards, this whole video game thing is starting to get ridiculous.

Look - Ronan gets needing time alone. It’s quarantine, they haven’t really gone out in like months, and they’ve been stuck in the same enclosed space together for that entire time. If Adam has to take a day or two to just chill on his own in a room to hear himself think again - fine, Ronan can understand. Sometimes he feels like he needs to take a day or two off from existing, spend a whole day just chilling in the shade of one of the barns out back, gazing listlessly up into the sky.

But it has been _nearly two weeks_.

He doesn’t want to seem whiney, but he is literally _living with his boyfriend,_ is a little kiss now and again too much to fucking ask? He gets it, video games are fun or whatever, but what about Ronan? Isn’t Ronan fun? He can have fun _with Ronan,_ it doesn’t _all_ have to be video games.

Towards the beginning of all this, he’d poke his head through the door of their room every once in a while, just to check on Adam or see if he’d finally like to do something else - but after two weeks of receiving only negative answers, Ronan started getting more and more disillusioned. These days he mostly just leaves Adam be - much like the virus, it seems this is something he’ll just have to wait out.

But it’s hard to do that when he can hear Adam constantly _begging for death_.

“Ok,” says Ronan as he enters their room, deciding to go for broke. “What the fuck is going on in here?”

“Ronan,” Adam groans, not looking away from the screen - he looks _utterly exhausted,_ his hair in clumps, eyes bloodshot, the rings around his eyes so dark they look almost like bruises. “If you have ever loved me, please just put me out of my misery.”

Ronan gapes at him open mouthed, completely flabbergasted. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, he chances a glance at the TV screen - some short dude in a red hat is jumping about, yipping and laughing and wahooing at him through the screen. As Ronan watches, he goes through a complicated series jumps and flips, landing neatly on one small platform after another -

\- before he smacks face first into a wall and falls into the clouds below, exploding into a shower of coins.

Adam throws the controller down in frustration. “Please!” he all but shouts, clasping his hands in front of him as if in prayer. “Please Mr. Mario, I’m begging you, please just land on the fucking platform! God! Kill me!”

Ronan nearly has a conniption at the sight: _Adam Parrish does not fucking beg_. For things to have deteriorated so far while Adam is living in his house is not only the greatest tragedy of his lifetime, it’s an assault on his honor as Adam Parrish’s boyfriend. He has to put a stop to this, no matter the cost.

“Alright,” he says - he reaches out and snatches the controller off the floor before Adam can protest - Adam lets out a pathetic sounding whine. “That’s it. You’re taking a nap.”

“No!” says Adam - he reaches out, desperately grasping at Ronan with his hands: to no avail. He’s either unwilling or _unable_ to stand, so all Ronan has to do is hold the controller above his head. “No, please - I was so close, Ronan! I almost had it!”

“You almost had a fucking stroke, you mean,” says Ronan dryly. “How long has it been since you last slept?”

Adam pouts, clearly unwilling to answer the question.

Ronan sighs. “You’re taking a shower and then you’re going to nap,” he says as firmly as he can. “You can play more later, but right now you need to take a fucking break.”

“Just one more level,” Adam tries.

Ronan glares. “No.”

“Come on!” Adam whines. “I could’ve finished it, really! I had that, I had the download, I just - Mario just threw himself off the edge of a cliff for no reason!”

“I don’t care,” says Ronan.

“You can’t do this to me!” says Adam petulantly. “It’s _my_ Switch, I bought it with _my_ money!”

“You need rest, Adam” says Ronan gently. “Now come on - it’s nappy time. Go take a shower and I’ll tuck you in.”

Adam launches himself forward, all but wrapping himself around Ronan’s legs. Ronan frowns, reaching down to try to dislodge him - except before he can, Adam tenderly brushes his cheek against Ronan’s thigh, giving him a wide eyed, pouty look as his bottom lip honest to God actually _trembles_ upwards at him -

\- and Goddamnit, dishevelled hair, eye bags, and frumpy clothes included, if he isn’t the _cutest fucker this side of the Mississippi river_.

“Please?” says Adam, staring wide eyed at him. “Just one more level?”

Ronan sighs - he is a weak, faint-hearted, spineless worm. Reluctantly, he hands the controller back to Adam. “Fine - one more.”

Adam instantly snatches it out of his hand and retreats to in front of the TV like some sort of awful, hoarding gremlin returning to its cave after acquiring a new shiny bauble. Ronan doesn’t know why he feels so disappointed - he doesn’t know what else he’d expected, to be honest.

He huffs, sitting down next to Adam - he feels like he’s at least earned that much at this point. He’s gratified, at least, when Adam leans into him, resting his head against his shoulder. He tries not to think about how this is the most physical affection he’s gotten out of Adam for, like, two weeks. He lets his head fall on top of Adam’s, watches Mario as he wahoo’s his way across more platforms, jumping and spinning and throwing his hat around.

Ronan frowns. “How long is this level exactly?”

“No clue,” says Adam. “I’ve been at it for like three hours.”

“You’ve fucking _what?!”_ says Ronan, giving him a look.

**V: Pokémon GO The Fuck To Sleep Adam, It’s Like Four AM, God-Fucking-Damnit™**

He comes awake to the faint sound of Adam laughing.

Normally this wouldn’t be too much of a problem - Ronan loves the sound of Adam laughing, especially if he gets to be the one to cause it. Except, as he opens his eyes, it’s still early enough to be dark outside and Adam is _holding his fucking Switch aloft, casting bright, flashing light onto their fucking bed._

“Adam,” Ronan all but whines. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Adam glances at him. He tilts the screen of his switch at him in acknowledgement. “I’m playing Pokémon,” he says.

Ronan groans. He hazards a glance at the clock on his bed table - as he’d suspected, it’s like 4:30 am. He turns back to Adam, annoyed.

“Why are you playing Pokémon at 4:30 in the morning?”

“‘Cuz it’s fun,” says Adam simply. He turns back to his game, giggling faintly at whatever is on the screen, Ronan’s previous interruption and obvious annoyance completely forgotten, somehow.

Ronan scoots closer. “The fuck are you laughing about?”

“This game,” says Adam, still cackling. “Everyone said it was bad, but it’s so good! I mean - look at him!”

Ronan looks tentatively at the screen being presented to him - for the life of him, he can’t figure out what’s so funny about it. All he can see is a [ giant yellow rat](https://www.newsweek.com/pokemon-sword-shield-wild-area-update-gigantamax-pikachu-eevee-meowth-1503490#slideshow/1589277), helpfully labelled at the top as a Pikachu as it stands menacingly behind Adam’s little player character.

He turns to look at Adam again. “I don’t get it.”

“Chumby,” says Adam, and then he bursts into uncontrollable laughter.

Ronan has never felt more dead inside in his life than he has right now.

“Adam,” he says, “how fucking long have you been awake?”

“Like forty hours,” says Adam without hesitation.

“What -” Ronan groans. “I thought I forced you to take a nap yesterday, at least,” he complains.

“Couldn’t sleep,” says Adam simply. He points at the Pikachu. “I was too busy thinking about _Him.”_

Ronan reaches over to place his hand on top of Adam’s, securing a firm grip to the Switch in the process, preventing Adam from continuing in whatever the fuck is causing his shaking laughter. He gives Adam _a look_.

“Adam,” he says quietly. “I love you - but what the actual fuck?”

Adam pauses, considerate. Almost gingerly, he lets his Switch fall back as he pensively gazes at the ceiling, clearly deep in thought. Ronan watches him with baited breath, praying silently in his head - the USPS delays means that the melatonin he’d ordered won’t get here until weeks from now, he doesn’t actually have any way to force Adam to sleep yet.

“I think,” says Adam finally, “I might need a nap.”

“You fucking _think?!”_

Adam sighs. With great and visible reluctance, he puts the Switch in sleep mode and sets it aside, placing it safely on the nightstand. He turns, resignedly tucking his head into Ronan’s side - Ronan quickly traps him in a hug before he can change his mind and try to go back to gaming.

“Alright, alright,” says Adam. “You got what you wanted, I’ll take a nap.”

“Thank you,” says Ronan into his hair silently sending a prayer of thanks to God - he makes a note to himself to hate himself slightly more the next time he goes to virtual mass as recompense.

Quietly, Adam giggles, soft and into the crook of his neck, drawing him out of his thoughts.

“What’s so funny now?” asks Ronan.

“Thiccachu,” says Adam faintly, laughing again.

Ronan sighs. “Go the fuck to sleep, Adam.”

**(VI: Animal Crossing: New Ways To Torment Ronan, Probably - Wait, This Is Actually Kind Of Cute and Fun, What The Fuck™)**

It’s probably not the best sign that Ronan’s started to make a new routine out of all of this. 

He’d had a different one in the Pre-Switch Era, one that he’d vastly preferred - of waking up and kissing Adam and eating breakfast and doing cute domestic shit. He _was_ starting to get a little tired of it at the time - it’d been his routine for all of quarantine, and it was getting a little old - but now, he’d give _literally anything_ to get Adam to interact with him regularly again. It’s like back in January, when they’d failed to impeach Trump and then nearly _gone to fucking war with Iran,_ and Ronan had thought to himself: _Well - at least it can’t get any worse!_ He swears, that fucking monkey’s paw must be running out of fingers.

Either way, he tries to make the best of it - he knows, compared to a lot of others, that he’s gotten off relatively well. Given the circumstances of...literally everything else, it seems a little gauche to be complaining about his boyfriend not paying enough attention to him. So he’ll make himself some coffee and maybe a nice breakfast if he feels up to it and tuck himself into the warmest corner of the breakfast nook to spend a solid hour staring forward into the wall, contemplating the meaning of human suffering.

All of this means that when Ronan turns around from plating his bacon and eggs to walk to his usual spot in the corner of the kitchen underneath the vent that blows warm air to see Adam sleepily padding in, he nearly drops his Goddamn plate.

“Morning,” says Adam casually, as if his mere presence here outside of their room and decidedly away from any video games hadn’t nearly _given Ronan a fucking heart attack_. He yawns, stretching his arms over his head, exposing a little sliver of pale skin as his shirt rides up with the movement. He uses the momentary distraction this causes to casually reach over and steal some bacon from right off Ronan’s plate with his bare hands and shove it into his mouth.

Ronan gawks at him.

Adam gives him a look back. “If you didn’t want me to take your food, you should have made me a plate.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen you out of our room before 4 p.m. in almost three weeks,” says Ronan, still staring dumbfoundedly.

Adam rolls his eyes. “You’re exaggerating,” he says, voice fond. “I’m not _that_ bad.”

Instead of responding with words, Ronan does his best impression of Adam’s face that one time Ronan told him he thought the Zodiac was a flavor of cheese.

It seems to get his message across, at least. Adam smacks him lightly upside the head. “Alright, alright,” he says. “So I like video games a lot more than I initially thought I would, sue me.”

“I’m almost tempted to try,” says Ronan, dry. “Maybe if I get custody of the Switch, you’ll be forced to fucking talk to me for once.”

Adam gives him a look. “Ronan, I was in our room that entire time, if you wanted to talk, you could’ve just walked in and started talking.”

“Tried that three days ago,” says Ronan. “You begged me for death, then conned me into letting you beat the moon, and then ignored me for, like, two more hours.”

“The moon? Oh - that was _one Mario level,_ I had to focus on beating it, ok?” says Adam, rolling his eyes. “It only took me - five straight hours. Hm.” He pauses, frowning. “Hm. I guess I see your point a little.”

Ronan sighs. “Look, I don’t mind you fucking playing video games all day,” he says. “The last thing I want to do is suck the joy out of something for you, ‘cause I know how much it sucks - I’m related to Declan.”

Adam snorts.

“Just - you know,” Ronan continues - he shifts, slightly uncomfortable for some reason. “Maybe - talk to me every once in a while. Or whatever the fuck.”

Adam visibly softens. “Oh, Ronan,” he says, reaching out to cradle Ronan’s cheek - Ronan leans into the touch desperately, despite himself. Adam gives him a wry look. “Were you lonely?”

“No!” Ronan protests. Adam smiles at him, pinching his cheek. Ronan’s pout deepens. “Yes,” he admits quietly.

“You should’ve told me,” says Adam gently. “I didn’t realize how much it affected you - I would have stopped if I had.”

“Fuck off, I’m not doing that,” says Ronan. “I’m not a wet blanket. I’m not ruining your fun.”

Adam’s gazes at him lovingly - he leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to Ronan’s lips, and _God_ he’d missed this. He all but melts in Adam’s grasp like - like - fuck, he can’t even think of a good simile, his brain is so fried.

“You know,” says Adam eventually. “If you’d just played the games with me, we wouldn’t have had this problem to begin with.”

Ronan frowns, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “I’m not a gamer, Parrish,” he says. “I don’t fucking know how to play video games.”

“They’re not hard,” says Adam. “I’ve been playing Animal Crossing recently: no skill involved. Just collect some fruit, cut down some trees, decorate things - easy and simple and relaxing.”

“I don’t know, Parrish,” says Ronan skeptically. “To be honest, from what I’ve seen so far, I’m having a hard time believing games can be _relaxing.”_

Adam laughs. “Animal Crossing is different, I promise! You can farm flowers and pumpkins and fruits,” he says enticingly. “There are lots of cute talking animals to make friends with.”

He has to admit - that does sound _vaguely appealing_. He’s always wondered what his cows were thinking. “I don’t know,” he says, still not fully convinced. “I’m not sure -”

“I’ll sit on your lap the whole time,” Adam offers.

Ronan stands up. “Alright, let’s do it.”

* * *

Four hours, way too much tutorial text, a talking cow named Angus, and a newly decorated beach later, and Ronan has to admit he’s starting to see the appeal.

“Damn,” he says, marveling at the newly created beach picnic scene in front of him - a lovely campfire surrounded by several hammocks next to a tiled blanket with a picnic basket and flowers set out on top of it. He and Adam’s little characters sit on the blanket, posing patiently as Adam scrolls through the options for an appropriate filter for a picture. “This is kind of nice.”

“Isn’t it?” says Adam.

**(VII: No™)**

“Say,” says Adam, offhandedly. “Do you think we could get a PS5?”

Ronan slams his hands down on the table in front of him, hard. _“Fuck no,”_ he says emphatically.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Crimmus here’s my shitty gift where everyone is OOC 100% of time but I don’t care because I think it’s funny.
> 
> I HC Adam as having a lowkey addictive personality type and being a completionist adl;kfja;lsdjflk;s def spends 12 hrs straight gaming, much to Ronan’s chagrin.
> 
> I’m working on some stuff for other fandoms rn - i have small monkey brain that can really only focus on one or two big projects at a time, and i have a young justice fic and a BNHA fic I’m writing rn, so i thought i’d write some short form pynch as a treat. My pynch content in general might have to be shorter for a bit - the BNHA fic in particular is getting pretty long al;ksdjf;kladjf and I have bad project management skills.
> 
> It turned into Nintendo propaganda, oops - I probably wouldn’t have made it through quarantine without my Switch, so I wanted to write something fun with that. It’s a little niche aksdjf;alsdj;ask idk how understandable it’ll be if you’ve never played these games, but I thought it’s funny to me lol. Too bad about Nintendo’s shitty business practices, anyway #FreeMelee.


End file.
